AVALARA ENTERS STRATEGIC ALLIANCE WITH TECH INDUSTRY TAX SPECIALIST CAROLYNN IAFRATE KRANZ

Adds leading sales and use taxability content for software, digital content, and cloud services

Avalara, Inc., (www.Avalara.co.uk), a leading provider of cloud-based software that delivers a broad array of compliance solutions related to sales tax and other transactional taxes, announced it has entered a multidimensional partnership with Carolynn Iafrate Kranz, a nationally-recognised expert in sales and use tax matters focused on the high tech industry.

With a deep background in state and local taxation, Kranz is founder of Industry Sales Tax Solutions, LLC, (ISTS), a subscription database containing fully researched sales and use taxability data  for software-related transactions, digital content, and cloud services; and Kranz & Associates, PLLC, a specialty law firm focused on state and local tax consulting.

As part of the partnership, Avalara will receive access to Kranz’s industry-renowned sales tax content for technology and digital products, and Kranz will serve on Avalara’s Board of Advisors and represent the company at industry events.

“Determining the taxability of software related transactions is highly complex and very difficult for sellers to manage, and we believe Carolynn and ISTS are among the best resources in the world for tackling this complexity,” said Scott McFarlane, Founder and CEO of Avalara. “Our partnership with Carolynn continues Avalara’s longstanding strategy of extending our reach into new industries, providing more businesses with a single place to turn for all of their transactional tax requirements.”

Over the past decade, Avalara has developed, purchased, or licensed databases containing deep tax data and knowledge related to sales tax and other transactional taxes, including tens of thousands of state and local tax rules, rates, and exemption conditions, as well as more than ten million UPC codes linked to taxability rules.

Most recently, Avalara acquired Zytax, FuelQuest’s excise tax software solutions, to consolidate sales and use tax with excise tax automation for comprehensive energy-based tax determination, compliance, and collection processing. Today Avalara maintains and continually updates an extensive library of tax content, enabling tax decisions on millions of products in multiple industries worldwide.

Avalara’s partnership with Kranz is the company’s latest move to broaden and deepen its tax content domestically and internationally. “Well-researched and maintained content is the lynchpin for any accurate tax decision,” said McFarlane. “People tend to focus on rates, but it takes extensive tax knowledge to identify and interpret the rules that underlie software related transactions as well as to stay current with the frequent changes that occur.  This addition extends our reach by helping make compliance more accurate for anything high tech, from traditional software to products and services in the cloud.

“Avalara is leveraging an amazing database of tax content domestically and internationally, and I’m thrilled to add my expertise to the mix,” said Kranz. “This partnership provides an ideal vehicle to deliver my extensive sales tax data for anything high tech in a user-friendly form, while extending our collective reach.”